Category

Published on

18 May 2016

Abstract

OOF2 is public domain finite element analysis software created at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to investigate the properties of microstructures. At the simplest level, OOF2 is designed to understand the effects of far fields (boundary conditions) on the local microstructural fields, or to assess the mechanical, electrical, and thermal reliability of a material with a complex topology.
OOF2 allows the user to study the thermal, electrical, and stress fields in a microstructure, along with couplings such as piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity, and thermal expansion. OOF2 can also perform crystallographic analyses of polycrystalline materials by using tensor form material properties.
The inputs necessary to perform a simulation include: 1) a microstructure (real micrograph or computer generated), 2) material properties and 3) boundary conditions. The specified information enables OOF2 to simulate the multiphysical properties, thus allowing to analyze and engineer the effect of microstructure.
The figures below is a lamellar directionally solidified eutectic of NiO and yttria-stabilized ZrO2 which was used as the input microstructure. Next a zoomed in view of the mesh is shown and finally the stresses developed in the microstructure due to an increase in temperature are displayed.